The Skookum Cast

September 2000. The BFRO came to elk country in the Skookum Meadow area of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, in southern Washington between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams. Forest, logged clearings, forest roads. Base camp sat west of Skookum Meadow, approximately 20 miles east-southeast of Mt. St. Helens, and Matthew Moneymaker led the expedition. With him were Richard Noll, Jeffrey Lemley, Thom Powell, wildlife ecologist Dr. LeRoy Fish, Derek Randles and others, along with a crew from the Australian television series Animal X.

The team used thermal imaging, pheromone chips, cooking smells and fruit bait. For several nights they broadcast a scream recorded near Lake Tahoe in late August 2000, a sound that carried up to two miles. Vocalizations were detected around 2:30 AM south of base camp. At about 3:00 AM a two-person team set out fruit piles at spots with soft soil; one sat in a shallow rainwater puddle over mud, ringed by hard-packed gravel that would not take a print. No cameras were left to watch.

Morning. Three of the six apples were gone, while the melons had been pecked by birds. At the edge of the mud lay a broad impression. Noll and Randles were two of the three who identified it, and they cast it on 22 September 2000. What came out of the woods measured about 3.5 by 5 feet and weighed about 400 lb.

The expedition's theory was precise. The animal had "laid at the edge of the mud and reached over to grab the fruit," leaving no tracks. The Idaho State University press release described "what appears to be a large animal's left forearm, hip, thigh, and heel." Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University directed the final cleaning, which revealed "extensive impressions of hair on the buttock and thigh surfaces." Meldrum spoke of an "8 to 9 foot tall humanoid creature."

Physical anthropologist Grover Krantz, author John Green and wildlife biologist John Bindernagel made the first assessment. Their conclusion was blunt. "The imprint was most likely made by a living sasquatch." The university release said the cast "may represent an unknown primate."

Others read the mud differently. Elk, deer, bear and coyote tracks marked the ground nearby. Loren Coleman noted elk hoof and coyote paw imprints in the cast itself. Most of the hair pulled from it was elk. Dr. Henner Fahrenbach said one sample looked consistent with his own contested collection of supposed Bigfoot hairs.

On 3 March 2001, Mark Hume wrote in the National Post that the impression matched "an elk's legs." Ron Schaffner, a former BFRO curator, saw a reclining elk's hind legs, hip, chest and wrist, while Anton Wroblewski, a geologist specialising in ichnology, concluded it was probably an elk. Matt Crowley argued the claimed skin ridges came from the casting material drying and posted video showing how an elk could make such a wallow. On Skeptoid in 2014, Blake Smith said the cast was "handled as a sensational discovery, but not as a scientific one." No findings ever reached a peer-reviewed journal.

The cast starred in Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, the Discovery Channel documentary first aired on 9 January 2003, beside the Patterson-Gimlin film. It went on public display at the 2011 Sasquatch Summit. When Meldrum died on 9 September 2025, the obituaries returned to it, including one in Skeptical Inquirer.

Four hundred pounds of plaster. A few hours of darkness. And nobody ever saw what lay down in that mud.